Dorset Ridgeway’s killing field

I am entertained by Simon de Bruxelles' approach to this story in the Times. The discovery of a mass burial on Ridgeway Hill in Dorset was announced in mid June. At the time there was considerable speculation that the site dated to between the late Iron Age to early Roman times.

More than a week ago, it was announced that the bodies probably dated to the 10th century.

It has taken the Times eight days and one telephone call (a chat with Oxford Archaeology's David Score) to follow up on the story:

It was a scene familiar from the killing fields of Iraq or the Balkans, but unheard of in rural Dorset. As the earth-moving machine peeled back a thin layer of topsoil, it exposed a tangled mass of human bones.

Fifty-one young men had been decapitated with swords or axes before their bodies were tossed into a pit. The heads were neatly stacked to one side.

Radio-carbon dating suggests that they were killed between 890 and 1034, when the South of England was pillaged by Viking raiders from Scandinavia. A month after the discovery archaeologists are beginning to piece the story together.

The pit was discovered during road improvements between Dorchester and Weymouth, venue for sailing events in the 2012 Olympics. A team of archaeologists had been following builders widening the A354 where it crosses the Ridgeway, a prehistoric track along the crest of the limestone hills of south Dorset.

Comments

[apartments knightsbridge london]

Pretty terrifying. Was it ethnic leansing of some sort?